One of my favourite horror films of all time is John Carpenter’s atmospheric 1980s classic The Fog. I’m not a fan of more recent horror films, preferring the almost low-budget quality of the older flicks. If you’ve not seen The Fog, then I’ll give you a brief plot outline. Basically, a small coastal town in California is invaded by a sinister fog, which just so happens to bring with it a horde of ghostly mariners who perished in a shipwreck a century previous. The undead take to the night adorned in seaweed and armed with fishing hooks as their chosen weapons, and begin bumping off the locals until an ancient curse is lifted.
For me, The Fog is a real spine-chiller and certainly the movie that inspired me to write this book. After watching the movie again I felt the need to cover stories pertaining to sightings of ghosts among the waves and on haunted coastlines, cliffs and beaches. Ghoulish fishermen, ghostly seamen and even the occasional spectral smuggler wouldn’t seem out of place in the 1980s film, and I doubt they would seem out of place here amongst those spooky ships: so enjoy this selection of some of my favourite coastal ghosts.
SHADOWS ON THE SEA
The following story is one so strange that I’m sure it will give you nightmares, should you think about it too much! Just before the outbreak of the First World War, supreme ghost-hunter Elliott O’Donnell went for a spot of fishing off an islet at Dalkey, a seaside resort in County Dublin. The day had been relatively productive with fish active around the bay, and so even as the evening drew in and the weather worsened to a heavy drizzle, Elliott stuck to his task at hand. Then, suddenly, there seemed to be an eerie silence; a strange atmosphere that appeared to affect the fish, who were no longer frequenting the water. Elliott felt frozen to the spot, consumed by horror and paralysed with fear. Looking out to sea, Elliott then saw a weird circular glow, yellow-greenish in colour, which became brighter and brighter. Within it, a seething mass of bubbles and churning began, when suddenly a whirlpool appeared, swirling hard around a black hole in the centre.
A ghostly sailor looks out to sea. (Illustration by Neil Arnold)
Elliott knew that he had to get away from this place but something forced him to stare at this turbulence, and soon his eyes were met by another set of eyes, staring blankly from the middle of the foam. The ogling eyes then formed within a face; a face Elliott recognised as belonging to a dear friend who had drowned at sea. Elliott managed to blink, hoping that the ghastly image would fade, but it remained there at sea, swirling and growing until, what seemed like hours later, the face began to fade, disappearing beneath the waves, leaving Elliott horror-struck and calling out to the boatman who had taken him to the islet.
Elliott sat in the boat wondering why the entity had appeared to him. He asked the boatman if he knew of any extraordinary experiences that had taken place at the spot. ‘Every year on this day at about this time,’ the boatman whispered, ‘us Irishmen that is – who are destined at some time or another to die unnatural deaths, see the spirits of the drowned.’ Elliott ran cold all over, the image of the face now embedded in his memory.
Many years ago in 1873, a fisherman named Ranold – a widower – was working on a fishing boat at South Uist when he was given the task to keep night watch. As the night grew long, Ranold began to drift off to sleep and slipped into a deep dream. In it, he heard the voice of his deceased wife shout, ‘Ranold, Ranold, dear Ranold, get up quickly and kindle your light. If you do not do so immediately you will be all lost!’ With that, Ranold leapt to his feet, just in time to see a large ship approaching on the waves. He hastily lit a candle and, to his relief, the ship managed to see the signal and alter its course. Otherwise, Ranold’s boat would have been smashed to smithereens.
In the Western Isles there is a ghost story that concerns a man named Allan Campbell, who was the son of a Stornoway merchant. According to author Francis Thompson, ‘One morning in the spring of 1786 he left Stornoway to go to the island of Scalpay to see his betrothed, Annie, and to go through the ceremony of the marriage contract with her.’ However, Allan did not expect to be hit by a raging storm that eventually destroyed the boat, killing all on board including himself. A few days after, Annie Campbell, in such a state of grief, killed herself. Her body was put into a coffin and loaded onto a ship for burial at the southern tip of Harris. However, as in the case of Allan’s boat, a storm raged on this journey, too, and the coffin fell overboard and disappeared among the waves. Those who were present reported that they had seen the spectre of Allan take the coffin. Later it was found out that this place in the sea was the spot where Allan had perished. Days later Annie was found, at the exact location where her lover had died.
The Western Isles have several sea-related ghost stories. (Glen Vaudrey)
There is another Scottish tale concerning a sailor who murdered his love, for some unknown reason, and in order to evade arrest joined the crew of a ship due to set sail for a port on the other side of the world. It seems, however, that the Scotsman could not escape his deceased wife. One night whilst at sea he spotted a strange light in the distance that was approaching the boat. He called the other crew members to ask if they could see it and they confirmed they could, but as the form rose to meet the boat it took the shape of a woman with golden hair wearing a white gown. The spectre came aboard the boat and accused the man of killing her. The man stood, eyes popping from his sockets, as she took his hand and dragged him overboard into the waves.
One story of note, which brings to mind those escapades involving phantom flares, was reported on by the Sunday Mirror of 5 August 1973. A man named Derek Vine, an experienced coastguard, was looking through his binoculars over Eastdean, at Eastbourne in Sussex, when he spotted a man facing the cliff with the waves lapping at his feet. Derek gave his binoculars to a police officer who confirmed that the man was there, and so two coastguards and a lifeboat were called in to action. When they arrived at the spot, however, there was no one to be found. The odd thing about the report was that the location the man was seen at was considered ‘un-climbable’. For Derek, this observation proved embarrassing, especially when the theory of a ghost was put forward. He commented, ‘An Excise man was lured to death by smugglers in the eighteenth century …’. Maybe this had been the same man, treading cautiously among the rocks before being swallowed by the waves.
On a more surreal note, on the night of 28 October 1988 a trawler off Dorset contacted the local coastguard to report that his vessel had been covered in a peculiar, sticky substance resembling a cloud of candyfloss! After the boat passed through the weird haze, the crew reported that the apparition had continued northwards. The coastal candyfloss was said to have measured some 30 square miles!
PHANTOM FISHERMEN
During the 1990s there was a fascinating case of a haunting involving a man named John who lived in Plymouth on the south coast of Devon. By day John was a taxi driver, but he also believed himself to have a psychic ability. One evening, at 5 p.m., John walked into his kitchen and was met by a very strong fishy smell. At first he thought that maybe there was something gone off in the fridge or there had been a problem with the drains but, rather strangely, this smell would only waft into the room at 5 p.m. each day. Just to check he wasn’t imagining things, John asked his two children and several friends if they, too, could smell the fish; and they could.
One weekend a neighbour of John’s named Peter was asked to look after the house whilst John enjoyed a short break away. He too reported the pungent odour. Eventually, John confided in a friend called Mandy who suggested that he get in touch with a contact of hers named Peter Bower, a spiritualist medium. Mr Bower told John that he would be happy to help and said he would come round one evening at 7 p.m. At this time on the arranged night, John and Mandy were sat waiting for Peter’s arrival when there was a knock at the door. John went to answer it but there was nobody there. Minutes later the door was knocked again but, once more, there was no one to be seen. Mandy believed that the knock had been made by the phantom that had somehow caused the fishy smell and so, rather bizarrely, decided to ‘invite’ the spectre in. Mandy opened the door and welcomed the invisible presence, which was accompanied by a strong smell of fish that wafted over to a chair, suggesting the present spectre had indeed sat down.
Shortly afterwards, Peter Bowers arrived at John’s house and confirmed that there was a spirit present. He said that it was a man, approximately 60 years of age, short in stature, and with grey hair and a miserable expression. The ghost gave his name as James Goldsworthy and gave the date of 1759. According to Mr Bowers, James had been a fish merchant who would walk from the shore, collecting fish, and take them to sell in the village. His route at the time would have taken him through where John’s kitchen now sat! Mr Bowers believed the phantom was somehow trapped and so opened some type of spiritual vortex for him to move on to the light. The stench was never experienced again.
At Sleat in Skye there is a ghost story pertaining to a phantom fisherman. Many years ago a lady had recently been made a widow and was in some distress that her husband had not left her any money. One night as the woman dozed off to sleep, she was awoken by a thunderstorm. By the light of a thunder bolt, she then saw the door open and her husband walk in. The ghost strolled across the room towards the fireplace and then mimed removing a certain brick, before bidding his wife farewell and vanishing. Minutes later, the woman went to the spot and tried several of the bricks until she found a loose one and removed it. Within the wall cavity she found her husband’s life savings.
There is an incredibly weird little tale of a spectral fisherman from East Sussex. At some point in the 1800s it was said that a fisherman resided in Hastings, but he was not your average man. It is claimed that he sold his soul to Satan in order to gain supernatural powers. These powers would enable him to turn into wisps of smoke in order to enter a room via the keyhole!
Another tale of a phantom fisherman comes from an undisclosed location somewhere in Britain. The spectre was witnessed by three teenage boys who, one afternoon to relieve their boredom, took a stroll down to their local beach. When they reached the shore the boys sat on the rocks to rest and chat when they suddenly heard a man shouting. The boys looked across the beach and noticed out at sea a man waving his arms as if drowning. As the tide rushed in it brought the man ashore, and so the boys ran towards him – only to see him stand up and stare into space. The boys questioned him, asking him if he was okay, and they noticed he was dressed like a fisherman and that his garments were quite tatty. Suddenly there came from behind them several voices and so the boys all looked round, but when they glanced back at the man he had completely vanished. Strangely, there were no footprints on the sand to suggest that anyone apart from the boys had been there. A few seconds later a lady, who had been shouting, appeared on the horizon and came down to the beach to speak to the boys. They asked her whether she’d seen the fisherman but she replied in the negative, stating that the reason she had shouted was to warn them away from the water’s edge.
Skye – haunt of a ghostly fisherman! (Stuart Paterson)
On 12 February 2012 the Daily Mail newspaper ran the headline, ‘The ghost on the locked pier’, after a student photographer named Matthew Hales claimed he had snapped a mysterious figure on Clevedon Pier in Somerset. The photo was taken at 6.45 a.m., a time when the pier was locked off to the public. Some believe the ghost could well be that of a fisherman, and over the years the man has appeared to some of the anglers who have taken to the pier, which overlooks the sea. Peculiarly, the newspaper article stated that fishermen were allowed on the pier twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, which would suggest that the man in the photo was nothing more than a flesh-and-blood angler, rather than a ghost. A month later paranormal investigator Richard Case, a former special policeman, was featured on the website thisissomerset.co.uk, claiming to have experienced spectral mists and eerie voices on the pier, but a majority of anglers didn’t seem convinced by the vague reports.
SPECTRAL SAILORS AND SEAMEN
Cornwall and Devon have many coastal ghosts and one of my favourite tales concerns James Bottrell, who as a young man served aboard a privateer. He was often haunted by the apparition of a shipmate who had drowned at sea. It began one stormy night: James had settled down at home to sleep but a few hours later he was awoken by three loud knocks on his window. As James looked up he saw the pale, miserable, drenched ghost of his comrade John Jones; within a minute or so the figure faded.
When James woke the next day he tried to convince himself that the wraith had been a nightmare, but every night as he dropped off to sleep, again the ghost would come, staying longer each time. During the day James tried to sleep, knowing full well that the spectre would come at night, but even then, by the light of an afternoon, the house was plagued by weird occurrences: unexplained noises and fleeting shadows. James became extremely paranoid, especially as the spectre was casting him a deep frown, and so eventually he confided in friends. They initially scoffed at such a thought but then, due to the grave look on James’ face, realised that something very peculiar was going on and they suggested he try communicating with the spirit. So when one day the spectre appeared to James when he was walking through a field, he decided to address his ghostly shipmate. He asked what could be done so that his spirit could rest. The apparition replied:
It is well thou hast spoken, for I should have been the death of thee if thou hadst much longer refused to speak! What grieved and vexed me most was to see that thou seemedst to fear thy old comrade, who always liked thee the best of all his shipmates.
‘I do not fear you,’ James responded. The ghost of John Jones looked pleased and, with that, explained how he had fallen overboard in the Bay of Biscay and that whilst drowning he thought of nothing but of his prize-money, stashed in a chest in a Plymouth pub.
The spectre added, ‘My son, I want thee to go thither; take my chest to another house; pay what I owe to various people in Plymouth, and keep what remains for thyself. I’ll meet thee there and direct thee how to act.’ After which, the spook faded away.
The next day James took a horse to Plymouth and on the second night on the road reached his destination. He stayed in an inn up the road from the public house where the chest was stored. As he lay in bed, the ghost of John Jones appeared again, and spoke:
Don’t ’e think, my son, that the landlady will make any difficulty about taking away the chest, for she don’t know, d’ye see, that it contains valuables, nor that I shipped aboard an Indiaman and got drowned a few weeks ago. But she remembers how – not long since – we wore each other’s clothes and shared our rhino, just as brothers should. Tell her I’m in town and will see her before I leave! Tomorrow bring here the chest and I’ll direct ’e how to deal with my creditors; and now good night.
And with that, he vanished.
When James visited the inn the landlady was very pleased to see him and was more than happy to be relieved of the old chest. She bid James farewell and asked him to say hello to John – not realising, of course, that the poor man was now deceased.
When all the business was settled, as James had promised it would be to his phantom shipmate, he headed to the dock, where John’s ghost then appeared. The spectre told James that he had visited the landlady and kissed her, as only a ghost can. ‘My dear Jim,’ the spirit said:
I will now bid thee farewell, I’m off to sea again … I know no other way to pass the time. Thou wilt nevermore see me while thou art alive, but if thou thinkest of me at the hour of thy death we shall meet, as soon as the breath leaves the body.
And then the apparition floated to the ship docked at the harbour.
James was sad to see his spectral friend go but livened by the valuables that his shipmate had left him.
On 3 January 1840 the ghost of a sailor was seen by the mother of the Revd Sabine Baring-Gould as she sat in her home at Bratton Clovelly, in Devon. The ghost was that of her brother Henry, who at the time should have been serving with the navy in the South Atlantic. One month later the lady discovered that on the day of her sighting, her brother had died near Ascension Island.
Falmouth Bay in Cornwall has been the epicentre of anomalous phenomena for many years, including sightings of sea monsters (see next chapter) and UFOs. It was at Falmouth in 1940 that a very weird experience took place, involving a woman named Lucretia Kelly. Lucretia had recently met a good-looking young sailor, Alan, who told her he was stationed on HMS Hunter, which had docked at Falmouth. They had several dates but on the night Alan was due to leave, Lucretia went to visit him and they took a walk. At one point the couple stopped to look at one another romantically and Lucretia almost screamed: Alan had turned into a skeleton! Lucretia looked away quickly but when she looked back he was back to normal. Lucretia never told her young sailor what she’d seen and they spent the last few hours together as normal, before HMS Hunter left Falmouth. On 10 April Lucretia was listening to the news when the story broke that the ship, carrying her lover, had sunk in Norway. Of 156 men on board, only forty-eight survived. Lucretia was sure that Alan had perished.
Lucretia eventually saw a photograph showing all the survivors and Alan was not among them. Many years later she spoke to a manager of a shoe shop about the incident and he told her he knew of the sailor and that he had survived! Researcher Michael Williams helped Lucretia investigate the case of the sailor, and wrote to the Naval Records’ department on her behalf. He found out that the man named Alan was not a member of the crew, which confused matters, but Lucretia insisted that she had written to Alan whilst he was on board HMS Hunter.
It was never known who the man Lucretia Kelly had been dating actually was. Maybe she had confused names? Sadly, Lucretia never kept the letters of the naval man, which served to cloud the waters even more. So the case of the mystery sailor will remain just that: a mystery.
A French sailor is believed to haunt the coast of the Isle of Wight. He was said to have been cast ashore from his wrecked boat and starved to death whilst cooped up in a cave. Golden Hill Fort is also haunted by a sailor. The large hexagonal building is today used by craftsmen, who have reported seeing a sailor who seems to like watching them work. Also in Hampshire, there once stood the old inn known as the White Garter Hotel in Portsmouth. The inn was said to have been haunted by a sailor named Whiskers, who was murdered one night during a game of cards. A group of sailors had been drinking all night when a fight broke out and Whiskers was struck over the head with a glass bottle. The murderer was so scared of being hanged that he struck up a deal with the landlady of the pub, who agreed that she would bury Whiskers in the garden. Ever since that fateful game, the ghost of Whiskers teased and tormented those who rented rooms out at the inn, until it was eventually demolished. Portsmouth is also haunted by a naval frogman who roamed the Sally Port Hotel. Meanwhile, the Blue Posts Inn, destroyed by fire in 1870, was once the haunt of a spectral sailor who had been murdered in the building. His body was secretly interred in the courtyard; unmarked until 1938 when a headstone was erected in his honour.
The Isle of Wight coast – haunted by a phantom sailor. (Neil Arnold)
Angus Roy was the name of a sailor who served on board a ship that sailed out of the port of Leith in the nineteenth century. For many years he had been bullied by people because of a severe limp. Angus had caused severe damage to his leg when he toppled from the mast of the ship, and so when he came to reside at Victoria Terrace in Edinburgh he became the subject of many cruel jokes, which drove him to an early grave. Some would say that surely in the afterlife Angus would have been free of all pain and able to rest, maybe so; but instead he chose to haunt those who tormented him. Those who have experienced Angus’ spectre claim that you always know when he is present because one can hear the sound of his leg dragging along the floor. Those who bullied Angus for his handicap came to regret every minute of their cruel words, and many have themselves now gone to an early grave, haunted by the sound of his cries.
There is another maritime ghost story related to Edinburgh. The ghost of a sea captain is said to haunt Buckingham Terrace, as was reported by members of the Gordon family who had moved into a large apartment there. On several occasions they complained to the porter about the noises coming from the flat upstairs, only to be told that the room was empty. Mrs Gordon claimed that the sounds made were as if furniture was being dragged across the floor, and so frequent and loud had they become that she decided to go above the porter and complain directly to the landlord.
One night, as Mrs Gordon was drifting off into a deep sleep, she was suddenly awoken with a strange feeling that there was a presence in the room. So spooked was she that she reached for her bedside bell in the hope of alerting her daughters, but in her anxiety Mrs Gordon knocked the bell to the floor. At that point, she sensed that the invisible presence had made its way to the door and was heading upstairs, which resulted in loud banging noises. After half an hour the tumult ceased and Mrs Gordon somehow managed to doze off.
In the morning she discussed the dreadful banging with her daughters but they told their mother they had had a perfect night’s sleep. As a result Mrs Gordon, being a very level-headed woman, decided that the whole commotion must have been the product of an awful dream. A month passed without any further activity, until one night when Mrs Gordon had gone to stay with friends, leaving her daughter Diana on her own in the apartment. Diana decided to sleep in her mother’s room – a bad choice, because as she entered the room for bed some ‘thing’ ran with haste up the stairs, brushing past her. Despite the overwhelming feeling of dread, Diana bravely gave chase. She ran up the stairs and opened the door of an upstairs room, only to see a vague shape in the gloom, which appeared to be winding an old grandfather clock. Diana stood still, terrified that the apparition or whatever it was might notice her and eventually it did, turning slowly to meet her gaze. The spectral spell was broken, however, by the call of Diana’s sister. Diana rushed back downstairs, told her sister all about what had happened and decided to spend the night in her own room.
When Mrs Gordon came home the following day her daughters were in a terrible state. After another period of ghostly inactivity, however, the spectre was forgotten about. Until, that is, one evening when, as Mrs Gordon lay in bed resting, she noticed the figure of a man standing in her doorway. The figure seemed to have an air of malice about him and in his hands he held a lump of lard and some rags. After a few seconds the figure turned and ran upstairs. This time Mrs Gordon felt so intimidated by the spectre that she decided to take drastic action, and the next day she told her daughters to pack their belongings, for they were to leave the apartment. Despite moving into new premises Mrs Gordon could not rid her memory of the spectre, and so decided to conduct some research. She discovered that the building had been reputedly haunted for quite some time and that it had once been occupied by a retired sea captain, who had become an alcoholic. One night the man became so irate after hearing a crying baby in another apartment that he rushed upstairs and, in drunken anger and realising the baby’s mother wasn’t present, decapitated the infant. The captain tried to hide his crime and decided to put the corpse of the child in the grandfather clock that stood in the corner of the room. The man was arrested soon after and deemed insane, and a few years later he committed suicide.
At Kenovay, located on the Isle of Tiree in the Inner Hebrides, there is a peaceful and rarely disturbed churchyard said to be haunted by a seaman. According to author J.A. Brooks, the seaman’s body was ‘seen both before and after his body was washed up on the shore and then buried in the churchyard’.
The village of Sefton in Lancashire once had a weird ghost story attached to it. An inn known as The Punchbowl can be found on Lunt Road in Merseyside. On New Year’s Eve in 1972 a member of staff working at the public house observed the ghost of a young man. The spirit was well defined except for his head, which appeared to be surrounded by a mist. The witness to the spectre rushed downstairs and explained to the rest of the staff what she’d seen but when they all went upstairs to take a look there was, of course, no sign of the wraith. The incident was reported in the Crosby Herald on 2 February 1973.
After a short while had passed, another member of staff – a waitress – had a spooky encounter at the back of the inn. She had walked into a section called the News Room when she saw a man in a sailor’s uniform. The woman screamed and fled in terror. After gathering her nerves – and thinking that maybe the gent had simply been a customer – the young woman decided to go back and take another look, but there was no sign of the sailor.
More and more people came forward to report sightings of the sailor in the same section of the pub, whilst others claimed to have heard ghostly footsteps and found doors swinging with no sign of a person nearby. Things took a rather sinister turn, however, when a young barmaid claimed she was accosted by the spirit. She was about to walk down the stairs when she was pushed. She tumbled half the way but, thankfully, wasn’t hurt. Meanwhile, a regular customer of the pub was attacked in the car park by an invisible presence that threw him from his bicycle.
One warm afternoon a man was enjoying a nice pint in the pub when something moving in the nearby churchyard caught his attention. When he looked out the window he was rather surprised to see a man in a sailor’s uniform digging a grave and so decided to go and investigate. Despite finding a pile of freshly dug soil, there was no sign of the mariner when the customer got there.
It transpires that, more than five centuries ago, The Punchbowl sat at the edge of the sea and existed as a church vicarage. Ships would often be wrecked off the coast and drowned sailors would be found, quite literally, on the doorstep. Villagers who found the bodies would sometimes bring them into the building and lay them in the area now known as the News Room. Eventually the dead were interred in the churchyard, their graves unmarked.
Nine miles east of Liverpool is Whiston. At Delph Lane in the area, a ghostly sailor has been noted. One night he bid his girlfriend farewell but fell into a quarry and now remains in the area, still pining for his love.
A ghostly sailor is said to haunt an area in Wolverhampton. During the 1920s the young mariner drowned along with two boys that he had attempted to rescue from a pool at East Park. Ian Deakin, in his letter featured in Fortean Times, Issue 135 (June 2000), states that in the 1960s his mother and family, who were living in a terraced house in East Park, had an encounter with the sailor. Ian wrote: ‘One night, while my mother and her older sister were talking before going to bed, they noticed a figure standing on the landing dressed in a sailor’s uniform.’ The sailor headed towards the bathroom and then disappeared from sight. Other family members reported seeing child-like handprints on some of the mirrors and also sensed and felt the presence of a child in the house.
A ghostly sea captain is said to haunt the island of Inishinny off Ireland’s Donegal coast. During the late 1800s, a small sailing ship consisting of a captain and two men put in to Gola Roads during a severe storm. Islanders at the time, upon seeing the boat on the waves, prophesied some terrible calamity and warned the trio not to return to their boat. Having been stocked up with provisions the seamen, ignoring the warnings, climbed aboard, but the next day their boat was found, ashore, with no sign of the crew. A short while afterwards, a man collecting firewood was walking along the coast when he stumbled upon the body of the captain. The two other sailors were never found.
One night, a group of locals were relaxing at a house on the island of Inishinny when they heard footsteps approach the front door. The islanders knew full well that there was no one else on this isolated land and they waited, with baited breath, to see who was about to enter. Imagine their shock when the door opened and standing there was the captain in all his glory. Most of the islanders were dumbstruck but one, not so affrighted by the figure, said ‘Come in’, but the figure turned round and headed off into the darkness. All those in the house rushed outside but could find no trace of the ghostly captain.
The county of Kent has a classic ghost story or two about phantom sea captains. One captain is said to make his presence known in an old pub called The Shipwright’s Arms near Faversham. The town is ancient, so it is no surprise that ghost stories are aplenty; but it is the Victorian seaman – dressed in peaked cap, reefer jacket and reeking of rum – who is at the top of the town’s ghost league. It seems that when his ship floundered somewhere nearby, he used all his might to drag himself across the mud flats but died just as he reached the old, creaky inn.
Admittedly, the remote location and general look of The Shipwright’s Arms make it the perfect setting for a ghostly tale or two; in fact, it would almost seem criminal for the place to be bereft of at least one spook. Some believe the Victorian ghostly tale is mere gossip that has embedded itself into folklore, but in 1997 the owner of the pub, a gent named Rod Carroll, claimed that the spectre was still very much active. As in the case of most reputedly haunted pubs, the banging noises, creaking floorboards, swaying tankards and occasional fallen ashtray are blamed on the ghost. In the 1970s, previous owner Eileen Tester also claimed she’d actually seen the apparition in the bedroom one evening. Indeed, several people have come forward over the years to speak of their encounters with the bearded spectre of a seaman, who clearly likes to get around in the pub. On one occasion an employee at the nearby boatyard reported seeing the captain enter the bar, while in 1995 the haunting was covered by the Sunday Telegraph, who stated that the then landlord, a man named Simon Claxton, believed the ghost to be of a Dutch sea captain.
The Shipwright’s Arms near Faversham – haunted by a sea captain. (Neil Arnold)
The town of Chatham harbours a historic dockyard: one of Kent’s most haunted locations. An American newspaper, the Edmonton Journal, on 14 February 1949 remarked, ‘Ghost of old sailor seeks haunted house’. The publication claimed that a peg-legged spirit – believed to have fought in the Battle of Trafalgar – was seeking a new residence to frequent after the proposed demolition of his current stomping ground, the barracks at St Mary’s. There has long been a rumour that a limping sailor has haunted the Dockyard, but this seems completely unfounded. A few authors have stated that the spectre is Admiral Horatio Nelson; although he never lost a leg, he did lose an eye and an arm. It seems that the dockyard’s phantom seaman is simply a tale passed down over the years. Some call him Peg-Leg Jack, simply because witnesses (although I couldn’t find any!) claim to have heard his wooden leg knocking on the boarded floors as he walks. Apparently Peg-Leg Jack, or whoever he is, was last seen in 1949 and may well have been a man murdered by French prisoners, but again this has never been verified.
One story I did find rather interesting concerns one of the most haunted parts of the dockyard, the Masthouse. Strange knocking noises were heard here on a ghost investigation and those present believed they were made by a spectral seaman, but what no one could explain was the awful squealing noises, which some believed were from a ghostly baby. The building is constructed out of old ship’s timbers (see a later section for more information on this type of haunting) and the ghost could well be that of a seventeenth-century seaman named Abel, who used to keep a pet monkey on board his ship. Maybe the weird scratching and squealing noises are from his ghostly pet.
What about the bizarre story covered by the Daily Mail on 5 April 2012 (and was it a belated April Fool’s)? The publication ran a story under the heading, ‘My haunting goes on: Couple sell house plagued by ghost of Titanic captain who was born there …’ Can it get any weirder? According to reporter Jamie McGinnis, a married couple from Stoke-on-Trent in Staffs purchased a Victorian property in 2002 for £35,000, not realising it was the birthplace of one Captain Edward John Smith who, it seemed, had returned to the house after death. Neil and Louise Bonner rented the property out for a decade but constantly heard reports from tenants of paranormal activity taking place, including icy chills in some rooms, a mysteriously flooded kitchen and a unique sighting of the spectral skipper. According to the newspaper article, ‘To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the disaster, the couple are now putting the house back on the market for £80,000.’
Two months later, the same newspaper reported ‘My replica of the Titanic is haunted by couple who died on original voyage’. An American model-maker from Virginia claimed that, after taking photographs of his precious model, two phantom ‘passengers’ appeared to be staring from the portholes.
This segment cannot be finished without mention of a ghostly Viking from Essex, as recorded by James Wentworth-Day. The encounter took place at Canvey Island as a man named Charlie Stamp rested one night in his cabin. Charlie was looking out of his window when he noticed a large, bearded man walking up the garden. The man was armed with a sword and had a ‘funny owd hat on his head … like a helm that was, with wings on.’
The man came up to the window and, upon seeing the startled Charlie, boomed, ‘I’ve lost me ship, mate. I want to get a ship to me own country. I’m a lost man.’ Charlie, feeling like he was in some surreal trance, gave the Viking directions towards ‘Grays or Tilbury’ and the figure walked off towards the marsh and out of sight.
Although slightly off topic from ghostly sailors etc., Mersea Island, found off the coast of Essex, is said to be haunted by a Roman soldier who frequents the shoreline. Most sightings reported tend to be on 23 September.
A SPOOKY SMUGGLER OR TWO
In folklore, it is often stated that smugglers were the greatest tellers of ghost stories, and their macabre tales were often created to keep trespassers away from their stash of contraband. Little did these criminals realise that whilst they spent their twilight hours fabricating spook tales, they would be shaping local folklore that, centuries later, would still speak of the reputedly haunted spots. As Gay Baldwin and Ray Anker state in their booklet Ghosts of The Isle of Wight, ‘If all our local smuggling yarns are to be believed there’s scarcely a cove or inlet of the Wight where tubs of contraband brandy have not come secretly ashore’. I think it would also be fair to say that, since the time of smuggling there probably is not a coastline in Britain bereft of a ghost story. Who would have thought then that such ghastly smugglers would become one with their tall tales.
On the Isle of Man can be found St Michael’s Isle. This desolate-looking place harbours a twelfth-century church with a graveyard believed to be haunted by pirate raiders. The cruel gang were said to have killed the local priest in order to steal his treasure, but when they set sail to escape they drowned not far from the coast. There is an urban legend, which states that if you knock on the wall of the church you can hear the pirates scream in torment. Witnesses have also reported seeing the ghosts of pirates and sailors walking up the beach.
The county of Devon, like so many other coastal areas in Britain, has a smuggling ghost. An area known as Heddon’s Mouth, situated between Ilfracombe and Lynton, has long had smuggling legends, which is no surprise when one considers just how many of the steep pathways and caves were frequented by such persons. In most cases, people report hearing the sound of creaking oars coming from the sea as if a small boat is approaching; then come the ghostly voices and an occasional dull thud, as if items are being transported ashore. The distinct sound of horses’ hooves has also been reported, particularly in the area of Kendall Lane.
Smugglers were said to have created many coastal ghost stories in order to keep people away from their contraband, which they would stash in barrels in caves. (Neil Arnold)
Lundy Island, mentioned earlier with regards to ghost lights, also has a smuggler tale. Two male spirits of intimidating presence are said to keep guard over a certain spot, where it is believed gold is buried. A Captain Robert Nutt, described by Peter Underwood as ‘a bold and bloodthirsty buccaneer who plundered ships’, used to have his headquarters on Lundy Island, so maybe it is his vicious soul that has been reported in one of the caves. Rumour has it that some years ago a journalist travelled to the island in search of the lost treasure. A coastguard was stationed at the mouth of the cave and told the reporter that, should he get into any difficulty or the tide come in too far, he must fire a shot.
The intrepid explorer trudged on in to the blackness of the cave, where his torch beam illuminated a ghastly skull. The brave man probed deeper and his morbid curiosity unearthed two skeletons – possibly victims of the tide as they attempted to recover Nutt’s treasure. The journalist explored further into the depths and, to his astonishment, found a rusty chest circled by stones. Rather excited by his find, he pressed forward, but then he heard a noise coming from the darkest corner of the cave and was sure that he had seen something move in the gloom. Was there some type of animal inhabiting the cave or was the treasure being guarded by some ethereal sentry? The reporter sensed that the only way to get to the treasure was to somehow blow the rocks up, but this would be far too dangerous and so, reluctantly, he left the cave and the treasure to the darkness and Captain Nutt’s ghost.
An uncanny experience took place at Lee in Ilfracombe a few decades ago now, and concerned a photographer who was taking pictures on the beach during a holiday. When the man returned home he put his photographs in to be developed. When he picked them up was astounded two see in one of the photographs a massive mooring post and, as if imprinted on it, two villainous faces. The heads resembled those of North African pirates, snarling beneath their headscarves. The appearance of these ghostly heads unsettled the photographer so much that he destroyed the photograph. Typical!
Many years after the incident, the photographer was speaking to the curator of a small museum in Ilfracombe about an unrelated topic when the curator brought up the subject of North African pirates. According to the curator, these criminals would lie in wait in the Bristol Channel; it would seem that their souls remain …
At West Beach, Portreath in Cornwall there is a hotel said to be haunted by a smuggler. The building sits within a few feet of the beach and over the years it has been a fisherman’s cottage and private residence. When alterations were made to the building some years back a hidden room was discovered between floors, adjoining the main staircase, and in this room was found a skeleton of a man, wearing a black cloak, who was seated at a table accompanied by an old chest. In the chest was found a couple of coins and some material, and in the hand of the skeleton was a sword. No one is sure whether it is this smuggler who haunts the building but, according to author Andrew Green, the spectre was last seen in the 1960s. A decade earlier, Green had stayed one night in the building and noticed a sudden drop in temperature, which aggravated the pet dog of the property who began growling as if something, or someone, was in the room. The area where the cold spot appeared was next to the wall that hid a tunnel entrance, which in the past would have been used by smugglers.
Dorset also has a ghostly smuggler. His screams have been heard in the vicinity of Worbarrow Bay. It is said that during the seventeenth century a group of revenue officers came upon the smuggler on an unmade road. The smuggler, to avoid capture, ran along the beach but found himself at a dead end and so decided to wade out into the sea, where he was then stoned to death. Is it his screams that can be heard above the howling winds on certain nights? There are some researchers, however, who believe that the ghost of the beach is in fact that of Napoleon; and that it is he who has been seen around the Lulworth Cove area. The figure – who appears as a dark shadow but also in unmistakable garb – was seen in 1930 by a woman who reported that the ghostly figure was accompanied by another person: they walked towards the sea and vanished. The story has been dismissed as legend, despite sightings since 1804.
There have also been phantom screams heard around the area of the beach and these could be connected to Lulworth Castle, which was destroyed by fire in 1929. Twelve maidservants disappeared at the time: some believe they left the castle and were never seen again; whilst others assert that the women had walked along the cliff path but were then swept out to sea. At least five different entities have been reported from the beach, so it could be said that, should one wish to spend a night ghost-hunting, then Lulworth Cove is the place to go. But I suggest you take care on those ragged coastal rocks because, should you suffer the same fate as those servant girls, you too will be confined to the limbo they are trapped within.
Norfolk is also known for its smuggling ghost stories and one such spectral figure is said to haunt Happisburgh. During the early eighteenth century three ‘free-traders’ had a row over the loot they had accumulated and one of the men was brutally murdered, his corpse hidden. In 1765 a ghost was seen to glide over the salt flats and disappear in the region of Well’s Corner. Those who have seen the ghost report that it holds a bundle under one arm, wears a blue jacket, is without legs and its head wobbles in peculiar fashion. A few years after the main hub of sightings, an area of sand on the beach was dug up and a male torso was found. Around its body was the remains of a blue tunic and, according to author Andrew Green, ‘a rotting bundle of a man’s legs and head were discovered’.
In his book Ghosts & Legends of the Lake District, J.A. Brooks writes of a handful of ghost stories possibly created by smugglers to keep people away from certain caves, where their operations were likely based. One such yarn concerned the remote shore at Silverdale, where it was claimed that all manner of boggarts and bogies would be created to ward off trespassers. While a cave at Lindeth was said to be guarded by a woman bereft of a head. How these smugglers managed to spread their ghostly tales is beyond me, especially considering that normal folk would surely have not trusted such men.
The county of Kent is riddled with tales of ghostly smugglers, said to haunt along the coasts. Many years ago the sea would lap away at certain spots, which now seem far removed from the water. Smuggling was rife around Romney Marsh (as are ghost stories) and further inland to villages such as Hawkhurst, so it is no surprise that the phantoms have embedded themselves into local folklore. One of my favourite Kent smuggler tales comes from the Isle of Sheppey, where the coast was once littered with ghost stories pertaining to shadowy figures said to be retrieving their booty from the shore. Several buildings were once said to harbour tunnels that acted as escape routes for smugglers; in the same way some tunnels are said to run beneath Kent churches for the same reason. Of course, a majority of these rumours have never been verified as the tunnels would have been filled in due to health and safety reasons.
The coast of the Isle of Sheppey – believed to be a haunt of spectral smugglers. (Neil Arnold)
A pub in Dymchurch on the Kent coast is possibly haunted by a smuggler. The Ship Inn dates back to the sixteenth century and secret passages have been found during renovations. It is likely these tunnels were used by smugglers. One night the landlord of the pub, a man named Andy Sharp, was awoken by the sound of someone walking about and, thinking it was his daughter going to the toilet, he supposed nothing of it until the sounds continued for quite some time. After a while, Andy decided to investigate but upon opening the door was greeted by total silence.
Many ghostly smugglers haunt Welsh history, too. Phantom pirates have been seen at Llanafan in Dyfed. The ghosts still roam around a cave located at Craig-yr-Rogof where their treasure is said to be hidden.
MORE COASTAL CHILLS
One of the eeriest ghost stories I’ve heard concerns the fishing village of Llandudno in Wales. Many years ago this remote spot was well away from the prying eyes of tourists and those that inhabited the resort often spoke of, and feared, the Gloddaeth Ghost. Although today the village attracts many visitors, over a century ago it was the perfect setting for a ghostly tale; one sure to send a shiver down the most hardened of spines.
A local pest control officer was called in by local farmers as there had been a terrible problem with foxes nipping away at livestock. One night the pest control officer, a chap named Thomas Davies from Rhyl, set up a hide in a tree overlooking the den of a vixen. As the night grew darker and the air grew colder, Thomas was startled by a horrific scream that came from the direction of the icy sea. It was a sound like nothing he’d heard before – far more bone-chilling than the cry of a fox – and it was coming closer. Thomas looked below him, his eyes scouring the blackness trying to pick out some type of form, when suddenly his eyes met a most fearful sight. There, emerging from the shadows, was a nude figure with the most hate-filled and fiery eyes. Thomas cowered into the branches of the tree as the ghoul fixed its wicked eyes upon him and then it suddenly crouched down low, sniffed the air, and sprang back to its upright position. Davies clung to the tree with all his might, petrified that he might fall into the spindly embrace of this nightmarish spectre, and hang on he did, until the break of dawn when with the coming light the abomination faded from view.
The Welsh island of Ynys Enlli (Bardsey Island) can be located 2 miles off the mainland of Caernarvonshire. More than 20,000 monks are said to be buried there and on certain nights, people on the mainland have reported seeing shadowy figures marching along the coastline of the island.
There are many haunted beaches in the British Isles. (Illustration by Neil Arnold)
A majority of ghost stories never revel in their horror, but instead often have a moral or are tinged with sadness, suggesting a broken heart or love triangle. One such story from the Cornish coast involves a woman named Sarah Polgrain, who lived at Ludgvan and who poisoned her husband. Legend has it that Sarah was deeply in love with a chap named Yorkshire Jack, who had convinced her to kill her husband, a crime which she was eventually hanged for. At her time of execution, Jack promised her that, three years to the day, after time at sea, he would be with her spiritually. It is said that Jack was so miserable after seeing his lover hanged that every ship he boarded he brought ill luck to, but one particular voyage – which took place three years to the day since Sarah’s execution – was to be the death of him. Whilst halfway across the Atlantic, a ferocious tempest swirled about the boat and the crew scurried below deck reporting that they had seen an atrocious female phantom appear in the grey clouds. Those brave enough to stay on deck witnessed a remarkable phenomenon: the evil spirit of her cruel husband in life who had bullied and beaten her. J.A. Brooks adds, ‘From the time that this western Jonah was taken away by the lady of his love and the devil, the ship was free from all the strange disasters which were constantly occurring …’.
Some say that Sarah forever loitered in the shadow of her murdered husband because she had never been baptised in the water of the famous local well; whilst all those who have been baptised will never meet the hangman’s noose. Further investigations revealed, however, that Sarah had in fact been christened in a neighbouring parish, and so now the locals believe that in the afterlife she is free from her master.
Another forlorn tale of lost love comes from Porthgwarra in Cornwall, where there is a spot called Sweetheart’s Cove. Many years ago, a rich farmer’s daughter named Nancy, unbeknownst to her father, was seeing a poor sailor boy called William. They were deeply in love and when William was called away to sea, he promised Nancy he would be true to her and return. Nancy would often sit on the rocks overlooking the sea in the hope that William’s ship would return and one night, whilst sitting at Hella Point, the pining woman heard the voice of her loved one calling. She walked to Porthgwarra Cove and was seen by an old woman to perch on a rock at the water’s edge and then be joined by a sailor. As the waves rolled stronger around them they did not seem to stir and, worried for them, the old woman shouted to warn them of the coming tide, upon which the figures seemed to drift out to sea. The next day, news arrived in the village that William’s ship had been consumed by the waves; the body of Nancy was never found. On certain nights when the tide lashes at the rocks of Porthgwarra Cove you can, if you are lucky, still see the ghostly couple, huddled together braving the winds in their quest for endless love. The rather aptly named Deadman’s Cove is also reputedly haunted. In 1978 two witnesses reported speaking to a man dressed in black who then faded before their eyes.
St Michael’s Mount – the ‘jewel in Cornwall’s crown’ – is said to be the county’s most famous landmark. It can be found at Penzance, jutting out of the sea like some mystical island. The website www.cornwall-online.co.uk states that a Benedictine chapel originally existed there, and that the castle dates back to the fourteenth century. The mount is steeped in folklore, too. It is said that the mount was built by a ferocious giant who would walk through the waves to the mainland to steal cattle and sheep. The spot of the well is said to be where the giant was slain by a boy named Jack: and so was born the legend of ‘Jack the Giant Killer’. The ‘ghost’ from the island, on the other hand, was reportedly a vision experienced in AD 495 by several fishermen, who claimed to have seen St Michael appear over the summit.
Returning to Devon: there is a ghostly woman in white said to haunt a stretch of water at Braunton. The ghost is known as Old White Hat and is said to be the spirit of a female who perished on her honeymoon as she and her groom were being transported across the water and their boat capsized. According to author Peter Underwood, the ghost ‘used to be seen walking along the beach of Northside seemingly calling for a passage to Appledore.’ This ghost story reminds me of the eerie phantom hitchhikers said to litter some of Britain’s roads. Old White Hat is often said to wait on the beach and appear to boatmen, but whoever picks the ghostly woman up is thought to die shortly afterwards. Various female phantom hitchhikers are often said to loiter by roadsides, waiting to thumb a lift from the people who ran them over in the hope of getting revenge by killing them. In other cases, it is said that the ghostly hitchers are waiting for a lift in the hope of finding the sweethearts they never got to marry; in most instances, researchers and storytellers agree that the spectres are forlorn souls, forever searching.
St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall. (Dr Chris Clark)
The main problem with these types of ghostly encounters is finding someone who has actually given a lift to a spectre in their car or boat. Researcher Dan Farson some years ago claimed that he saw Old White Hat on the beach, after he was alerted to her presence by a neighbour. Mr Farson hurried to Braunton Barrows just in time to see a whitish form wearing a white hat perched upon its head disappear into the dusk.
The Woolacombe Sands of North Devon are home to a number of loitering phantoms. One such spook is that of Sir Robert Chichester who lived at Martinhoe, but by far the queerest story concerns a white lady. One late afternoon a man named Taylor was walking along the sands with his small dog. As dusk was drawing in, the man became quite unsettled and hoped that his dog would not keep dawdling. Taylor’s dog had a habit of running off into the sea and playing among the waves but this evening Taylor was eager to get home. Too soon, darkness fell. As Taylor reached a certain spot on the beach, the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and a terrible cry filled the air. Immediately, Taylor rushed to the aid of his dog, thinking that maybe he had injured himself on the rocks of the shore, but when he heard the whining again he realised it was further in the distance. All was still apart from the lapping of the waves, and Taylor was now convinced that the cry had not come from his dog. Then, suddenly, just a few yards in front of him appeared a woman dressed in white with her back to him. Taylor stepped back with a start, not expecting to see anyone at such a late hour. The woman gracefully walked on ahead, Taylor never once seeing her face. Taylor watched her intently as she glided towards the edge of the water; she seemed to tiptoe on the sand. He had come to within just a few yards of the woman when he felt a tug at his trousers and, looking down, fully expecting his dog to be there, but was shocked to see nothing. Taylor whistled for his dog but there was no response; just the eerie silence of the night. Turning back to face the woman he was even more surprised to see that there was no one in sight. There was no way she could have run off in such a short space of time; he would have seen her on the long stretch of beach. It was then that Taylor realised something quite shocking. The spot of sand where the woman had stood was incredibly soft, like sinking sand, and it struck him that if he had gone a step further he would have succumbed to the bog. Taylor turned back, changing his direction, and with haste ran home, leaving his poor dog to the night.
The next day, Taylor explored the shoreline and found the broken body of his dog at the water’s edge: judging by the injuries it looked as if the animal had been attacked by a large fish. When Taylor spoke to his landlady about the eerie woman she told him that the tales were true and that those who had followed her had perished on the sands. It appeared that the alluring woman had been attempting to lure Taylor to his death. One question did cross his mind: had the ghost of his own dog, who had likely perished at the sound of her howl, saved him by tugging at his leg?
Another peculiar incident was recalled by a young married couple who had once settled down for a picnic one evening on the cliff tops overlooking the sea at Lynton in Devon. The spot, known as the Valley of the Rocks, has always been a rather enchanted place, and on this occasion the couple were drawn to the sound of beautiful singing coming from below them. At first, the couple thought that maybe there had been a boat on the water below but when they looked over the edge there was no vessel. The young lady came to the conclusion that the noise had come from seals but her husband had definitely heard the words of a song.
On 20 October 1964 the Daily Express ran the headline, ‘Penitent Ghost Haunts Navy Wives’, after a sailor asked to be excused from his all-night duty to return home to his wife and son at Seaton in Devon because numerous paranormal occurrences had been experienced. The house, situated in the beachside village, was said to have been haunted by a mysterious figure that wanted to apologise for committing a stabbing. A medium was called in to contact the restless soul, which apparently told the woman: ‘I cannot rest until I find my mistress to apologise. I should not have killed her.’
According to the newspaper, ‘Twenty-three years ago, a Scottish maid killed her mistress with a carving knife in the house, which the Navy has converted into married quarters.’ The sailor – a Mr Smith – was told that his 2-year-old son had been given sedatives to calm him after numerous appearances of the ghost. Judging by the newspaper article, the spiritualists were no more successful in slaying the ghost than the local reverend.
In 1883 a ghostly woman was seen at a location called the Hoe in Plymouth. The wraith was spotted by two 14-year-olds as they took a swim in a pool out to sea. One of the teenagers reported at the time:
We met no-one on the Hoe but at the bottom of the steps near the bathing houses I happened to look up and saw a woman looking over the wall – looking at the steps at the farther end of the pool. We did not like the water that morning as it was too calm, so we soon returned to the edge of the pool. But instead of running round the pool we thought we would swim across the pool. We both went in together with a big splash, at the point where we had seen the woman gazing. On the way back I saw a hat floating. I brought it in. It was like the hat the woman wore who had been gazing into the pool. Then we dressed and went home for breakfast.
Later that day a policeman got in touch with the teenagers. One of the teenagers was taken out of school and, along with the other who had been at home, was taken to the mortuary to identify the body of a woman. She had been found floating in the pool at the exact spot where the youths had jumped in. Bizarrely, the woman in the mortuary was the same woman the youth had seen overlooking the pool.
The Old Spanish Barn on the seafront at Torquay, Devon, is reputedly haunted by an attractive Spanish girl. She, along with her love, came ashore from the Nuestra Señora del Rosario, from the Spanish Armada, whereupon both elopers were taken prisoner and held at the tithe barn in Torquay. Peter Underwood states that she was the first prisoner to die. Her ghost has been seen on the seafront and, on occasion, close to the road where motorists have reported her forlorn form.
A woman in white, often bereft of a head, is said to haunt the north-east coast of Skipsea in Yorkshire. The spectre is of a periodical nature. Meanwhile, between Skipsea and Atwick, there is said to roam another headless wraith. A horseman mounted upon a spectral white horse gallops along the coast and another headless horseman haunts an area between Frodingham and the sea.
We must not forget, either, the terrible tragedy that spawned a ghost story at Staithes on the north coast of Yorkshire. On 14 April 1807 a young girl named Hannah Grundy and her three friends were gathering shellfish to supply to the local fishermen. After a while, they decided to rest underneath a cliff when a sharp stone tumbled from a ledge and severed Hannah’s head clean off. To the horror of the other girls, the head of the girl was cast some 30ft away, and ever since this accident a young woman had been seen haunting the beach.
The seaside town of Whitby doesn’t escape the realms of folklore either. Not only did author Bram Stoker get inspiration for his classic novel Dracula from the town, but there is an eerie coastal ghost story too. In 1907 a local man had an uncanny experience on the West Cliff. At the time, he was in the company of several boy scouts when they noticed something odd on the cliff, just below the monument dedicated to explorer Captain Cook. A whitish, misty figure floated down the face of the rock. Intrigued by the sighting the witnesses ran to the spot where it was due to land, but there was nothing untoward to be seen. Had the witnesses simply seen fog? Well, according to those present, there was no trace of fog or mist that could have accounted for the apparition. Fog also does not suffice to explain the fact that, some seventy-five years later, a woman and her husband walking their dog on the beach also saw a similar form that drifted down the crag. The woman’s husband was so scared he left the area immediately and refused to talk about it afterwards.
In the vicinity of St Mary’s church there is the grave of a seaman. The weird ghost story from this location claims that a phantom coach travels along Green Lane and then stops at the graveyard. The ghostly passengers alight and, for some unknown reason, stand around the seaman’s grave.
There are so many stories pertaining to ghostly women said to haunt beaches. Blackpool, which for the record also has a ghost-infested theme park, has a haunted beach. On the Christmas Eve 1919 a young woman named Kitty Breaks was found murdered on the sand dunes in the vicinity of Lytham Road. The poor girl had been shot at point-blank range three times. Before her death, Kitty (real name Kathleen) had been involved in a stormy relationship with a man named Frederick. It seems that the pair had a terrible argument and Frederick shot dead his partner. He was executed shortly afterwards. Ever since then, a woman has been seen forlornly walking along the beach on Christmas Eve, loitering among the sand dunes and spooking anyone who should be in the vicinity.
Staithes on the north coast of Yorkshire – haunt of a headless girl. (Stuart Paterson)
The ferocious coast of Whitby. (Stuart Paterson)
A woman dressed in blue is said to haunt Kingsdown in Kent, a stretch of beach known as Old Stairs Bay. The woman is known as the Blue Lady of Romney Codd and has been seen to vanish near the fence of Kingsdown House. Others who have seen this woman have reported how she bends to drink from a spring, suggesting she is rather at ease in her spiritual place. Yet what of the sightings that mention how she moans as if in distress? No one has ever found out who this woman could be, we only know that she often visits the beach at the time of a shipwreck.
Whilst on the subject of Kent, it should be mentioned that one of the most haunted stretches of coastline is said to be Reculver, a few miles east of Herne Bay. Here sits Reculver Towers – a remote spot overlooking the sea where Roman structures have been found. The local ghost story is quite an eerie one, as many ghost-hunters and the like will tell you: on certain nights the cries of babies can be heard, soaring across the sea. Many people believe that centuries ago infants were sacrificed at Reculver, but this may have spawned from the fact that in 1996 archaeologists discovered three small skeletons in the walls of the Roman fort. The size of the skeletons suggested the babies were no more than six months old, and they may have been killed in some type of ritual. On numerous occasions people have contacted local police to report hooded figures; all in all making Reculver one of the county’s spookiest locations.
Eerie Reculver Towers on the Kent coast. (Neil Arnold)
The Giant’s Causeway can be found on the north coast of Ireland. It is a spectacular setting of jagged rocks, which are staggered out across the water. The rocks are the result of a volcanic eruption and the area has been described as the eighth wonder of the world. According to the official website, there is a great deal of legend and folklore around the causeway: one story alleges that the structure was built by a man named Finn McCool as a walkway to slay a Scottish giant. There is also a tragic ghost story from the area. In the summer of 1910 the Smyth family of five – consisting of Mr Smyth, his wife, two daughters and their young son – visited the Giant’s Causeway for a holiday and took in the awesome cliffs before setting down for a peaceful picnic in the shade from the sun. The Smyths’ son Charles liked to think himself as a bit of an explorer and managed to escape the watchful eyes of his sister for a few short moments, but sadly that was enough. The family could not find Charles; the great rocks presented themselves as an inhospitable maze of danger and despite a thorough search, there was no sign of the adventurous Charles, until three days later when his body washed up with the tide.
Those who’ve encountered the ghost say they saw a small boy in a sailor’s suit on the beach. One couple had a frightful encounter with the lost soul when they crossed a serrated set of rocks, only to almost walk into the young boy. They asked him if he was lost but when he turned to face them, they were shocked to see that his skin was pure white and his clothes sodden. Seconds later, he vanished before their eyes.
As mentioned briefly at the end of the last chapter, a creature known as a hellhound has been seen on some of Britain’s coastlines. These phantom black dogs go by many names, the most popular being Black Shuck, Padfoot, Bargest, Guytrash and Striker. In most cases, such fiendish creatures are said to have black, shaggy fur, eyes like hot coals and tend to follow lonely travellers. In some instances, such spectral dogs have been known to appear and disappear at will, or burst into balls of flame. Other legends claim that these animals – said to be as big as a calf – appear during bad storms and act as omens of misfortune.
The Black Shuck – the name deriving from Scucca/Sceocca, meaning Devil – is said to roam the beaches of East Anglia. Many years ago children would refuse to walk along the coastal pathways in fear of meeting the beast, whilst fishermen were also fearful of the dog. Author W.A. Dutt states that ‘he revels in the roaring of the waves and he loves to raise his awful voice above the howling gales’. On some parts of the Norfolk coast the hellhound is said to only have one burning eye and, should you encounter the cyclopean nightmare, then your life will end soon.
No one is quite sure what realm the black dogs of folklore originate from, but such ghouls are not simply ghosts of someone’s pet dog that has died. These legends are known worldwide, and the dogs are said to vary in colour and size. In the Hebrides there sits a spot called South Uist. Here there is a legend of a ghostly dog known as the Faery/Fairy Dog or Mauthe Dog. Those that have seen the animal describe it as white in colour and the size and shape of an Arran collie. It also goes by the name Cu-Sith and has been seen frolicking among the waves.
The fiendish Roy Dog of Dorset folklore. (Illustration by Mark North)
Cave Hole, Portland in Dorset – coastal lair of the devilish Roy Dog. (Mark North)
On the Isle of Mull, locals have a similar creature, but the legend here is far stranger. A man named MacPhee was said to have shipwrecked in the area in 1615 and pulled himself to safety on the shore when he was approached, according to Alasdair Alpin MacGregor, by a ‘faery woman’ who ‘gave him a faery dog, assuring him while so doing that one day this supernatural creature would stand him in supreme stead’. Many years later, it is rumoured that whilst hunting in Jura he was saved by the dog when his own foster brothers tried to murder him.
The footprints of the Mauthe Dog were said to have been discovered on the sands at Luskentyre in South Harris. Men roaming the shore one day came across the enormous prints, said to have been the size of an outstretched palm, which would not really make sense if the animal was only the size of a collie.
In Dorset folklore, there is a phantasmal creature known as the Roy Dog. The beast is said to inhabit a cave at the southernmost tip of the Isle of Portland. When a storm comes in it is said that no one should venture near Cave Hole, because the creature has been known to drag unsuspecting victims into its cavernous lair, which overlooks the sea. There is one story that speaks of three young men who were fishing from the ledges at Cave Hole. It had been such a bad day with regards to a catch that two of the men decided to pack up and go home, but one fellow was of dogged determination and stayed until late. As the shadows crept in, the two early leavers decided to stop off at a local boozer when in the distance one of them saw a massive black hound limping along the pathway. They watched the creature for a short time and realised as it bathed its injured paw that it was in fact the legendary Roy Dog, for it was as tall as a man and had glowing red eyes the size of dinner plates. One of the men almost choked with disgust when he saw that entangled in the fur of the animal was a human eye, which must have been plucked from its latest victim. The men shuddered and made for home.
The next morning word got out that the fisherman who had stayed at Cave Hole had not returned home, and so his two friends walked back to the area to look for him. Once there they found their friend, as stiff as a board, bereft of eyes, perched on a jagged ledge. His fishing rod was still in his hands but his face was contorted with horror, and on the hook of the rod there was a clump of gory hair with a claw embedded into it. A tale straight from The Twilight Zone indeed.
It is also worth noting that a giant black hound has reportedly been seen on the beach at Formby in Merseyside. The ghostly dog never leaves tracks.
There are quite a few stories of haunted caves, said to be dotted around the British coast. Elliott O’Donnell spoke of some in his classic book Ghosts with a Purpose. One incident that comes to mind featured a place known as Black Head Creek on the Isle of Man, where it was said that treasure had been buried. Several ghosts were believed to guard the cave. O’Donnell writes: ‘On one occasion a boat full of people was seen to enter the cave. The boat was subsequently found intact in the cave, but of the people no trace was ever discovered.’ Had they been kidnapped by the guardian ghosts?
In Irish folklore there is a horrid creature known as the Pooka. This manifestation is known to haunt stretches of the west and north-west coast of Ireland, especially Galway. In this instance, the beast is said to take on the form of a black horse. Such a beast has been observed crashing through the waves, reminding one of the water horse or kelpie of Scottish folklore, which is said to appear to gullible people who will leap upon its back for a ride only to be taken into the depths of a pond or lake.
Reverting back to Dorset, we find Studland Bay has a ghost story attached to it. A few years ago, a couple were walking along the beach when they spotted a whitish figure walking parallel with them along the shore. The couple walked by a hut and lost sight of the figure, which did not emerge from the other side. This spectral encounter was backed up when a man named William Sargeant reported to ghost-hunter Peter Underwood that one afternoon, whilst walking on the same deserted stretch with his wife, they decided to stop for a nice cup of tea. Whilst sitting on the sand they saw a figure appear in the distance, which looked like a man wearing a white suit. The couple continued drinking and chatting, all the while keeping their eye on the figure. They then realised it was in fact floating. The couple began to pick their things up and noticed that the figure was now close to the beach hut and then, seconds later, was nowhere to be seen. It seems that a traitor was once found out and killed on the beach. Had the figure been the ghost of an Englishman who was in cohorts with the Germans during the Second World War?
Weymouth in Dorset. The esplanade has a weird ghost story attached to it. (Mark North)
Another Dorset tale comes from Weymouth and was relayed by a Mr Hector D. Campbell, a member of the Ghost Club. He spoke of how one day he was walking along the busy esplanade with his fiancée when his nostrils were invaded by a strong smell of sulphur. Mr Campbell then felt compelled to look towards a seat on the beach and was surprised to see an old woman perched upon it. Despite the fact it was a very hot day, Hector reported how he came over icy cold and when the woman looked back at him, he sensed an air of wickedness about her. Seconds later, Hector’s fiancée, who hadn’t seen the old woman, asked if they could sit down. When she approached the seat where Hector had seen the crone (which to her seemed empty), he became unnerved and seized her arm, saying abruptly, ‘No, no, there is no seat there’. But his fiancée was having none of it, accused Hector of acting crazy and went to sit in the seat. To his horror, as she lowered herself Hector saw the old woman open her arms, as if to invite her. The next thing Hector knew he was lying on the floor with a policeman looking over him. Hector had fainted on the spot. Seconds later, he was told by the policeman that his fiancée had died in the seat.
THERE IS AN OLD LEGEND WHICH SAYS …
When wild November winds are whirling round the cliffs of North Hill and sailing craft are straining at moorings in Minehead’s little harbour, children keep indoors at night for fear of meeting Old Mother Leakey.
This may sound like a verse from a creepy nursery rhyme, but Old Mother Leakey was said to have been a ghastly ghost rumoured to have existed, in the ethereal sense, from the seventeenth century onwards. An old lady named Leakey resided in Minehead, a coastal town of Somerset, during the early 1600s. She was a gentle soul but after she died many people blamed her spirit for odd occurrences, and she was given the nickname of the Whistling Ghost. In life, Mrs Leakey had been the mother of a sea skipper, and in death her spectre was said to be heard whistling through the masts of his boat. So eerie were the moans, and so hideous the activity, that the poor skipper was unable to get a team to sail on his vessel. The Bishop of Bath and Wells, a chap named Sir Robert Philips, was called to the home of Mrs Leakey’s grandson after it was alleged that some unseen supernatural force had attempted to strangle him. On another occasion, Mrs Leakey’s daughter-in-law was looking in the mirror when a spectre appeared behind her. The ghostly happenings were dismissed by the commissioners, but locals maintained that the Whistling Ghost was very real.
Another ghost considered very ‘real’ is that of naval air mechanic Freddy Jackson, who appeared in a photograph in 1919 of the maintenance group of HMS Daedalus, gathered on the runway at Cranwell in Lincolnshire. Three days before, however, Freddy Jackson had been killed when he fell into the blades of a propeller.
The story of the ghost in the photograph was covered by the Daily Mail of 1 July 1996, and everyone who has examined the print believes it to be genuine, with no signs of tampering. An air marshal, Sir Victor Goddard, mentioned the ghostly image in his Flight Towards Reality and stated: ‘There he was, no mistake, although a little fainter than the rest … Indeed, he looked as though he was not altogether there; not really with that group, for he alone was capless, smiling; all the rest were serious and set and wearing service caps.’
Without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most unusual and haunted pubs in Britain can be found in Tyneside and is known as The Marsden Grotto. Paranormal researcher Mike Hallowell comments, ‘The pub nestles into the limestone cliff face at Marsden Bay on the coast of South Shields.’ Several ghost stories are attached to the building: one, which could have been mentioned in an earlier segment, is that of a smuggler who was shot dead many years ago as he tried to evade an excise officer. In the 1990s a television series called Ghost Detectives filmed in the pub, and one crew member claimed that an ashtray was thrown at them, possibly by the phantom. The building is also said to harbour two female entities: a mother and daughter.
The Farne Islands can be found off the coast of Northumberland. Some of the most unusual stories are attached to this group of islands. Researcher Alan Robson records that ‘Local boatmen and fisherfolk claim to have seen ugly, deformed demons lurching across the rocks …’. These despicable critters have been known to ride the backs of goats and wolves. It is rumoured the manifestations are the ghosts of people drowned at sea and that, despite being bad people, they were never bad enough to reach the depths of fiery Hell.
An extremely curious tale was once contributed to Fortean Times magazine by a chap named Jake Willott, who in a letter wrote of ‘a girl at the junior school in Flixton, Manchester who had an interest in strange and paranormal occurrences’. According to Jake the girl, who was only 11 years of age at the time, brought into school a seashell and, like most children, asked the other kids if they could hear the roar of the sea inside when they pressed their ear to it. However, on one occasion Jake said he put his ear to the shell and could hear the distinctive sound of the creaking and groaning of a ship’s rigging. Jake passed the shell to his friend who also heard the sound as well as faint drums, which got louder and louder. These were followed by muffled voices and then a piercing scream that was so loud the other people in the room could hear it.
The young girl told everyone present that the shell always acted in this way and believed that the sounds were from the crew of a wrecked ship which had run aground on an island inhabited by cannibals.
The Norfolk coastline has a story concerning a ghost who has become known as the ‘long coastguardsman’. In her book Norfolk Ghosts & Legends, Polly Howat notes that ‘He has not made his presence known for a long time,’ and thank goodness because this seems to be one strange character. Local tradition is that the figure, when rarely seen, glides along the coast at midnight on a moonless night and makes itself known by screaming and shouting at the top of its voice whenever there is a lull in the wind. Those who have been submitted to the noises say the ghost emits peals of laughter; but others say they are cries for help. No one has the foggiest idea who or what the spectre is but it does remind one of the spectre known as the Whooper of Sennen Cove in Cornwall. This ghost, if it is a ghost at all, manifests as a strange whooping sound, which drifts through the mist often before a severe storm. The Whooper may in fact be a guardian spirit, protecting not just the cove but fishermen from treacherous weather. Either way, recent legend has it that one night, two determined souls clambered through the heavy mist, broke the spell and the Whooper was no more.
One story that I’ve always found amusing and intriguing at the same time is related to The Shiant, or ‘Charmed’ Isles, located in the Minch of the Outer Hebrides. This remote place and its waters are said to be prowled by small blue men, known as the Blue Men of the Minch; a race of supernatural humanoids who have blue-grey skin and bearded faces. These fiends are responsible for the turbulent waters experienced in the channel, which divides the Outer Hebrides from the mainland. The weird race are said to lurk in the waves and lay siege to any vessel that attempts to pass, and so a majority of fishermen tend to avoid the waterway for fear of being captured and then dragged into the caves where the blue men live. Although this story may sound like the Smurfs gone wrong, it is a legend said to be based on fact. The book Folklore Myths & Legends of Britain mentions how the Norse pirates who invaded the Scottish isles ‘used slaves from Moorish ships; these were Berbers who wore blue garments and veils …’.
Almost as strange as the tale of the blue men is the yarn pertaining to Black Eric, a hideous savage who once inhabited the caves around the Shetland Isles, particularly the spot known as Fitful Head. This grotesque wild man would travel across land on a demonic horse, as one does, and steal sheep from the villages. Thankfully, the vile character met his match and died at the hands of a man named Sandy Breamer; who fought Eric, forcing the sub-human over the cliffs to his death. Nevertheless, some say his spectre lives on around the jutting rocks of the bay.
Returning back to Norfolk, I’d like to share with you the haunting of Blacknock, a mud bank that lies about a mile out to sea off what are known as the Stiffkey Salt Marshes. It is the sort of area where people tend to gather in search of blue-shelled cockles. The women who used to collect these shells were known as the Stiffkey cocklers; tough souls who would brave all weathers in search of their quarry. Sadly, due to their persistent nature, one day one of the women who was out on the mud alone didn’t see the bank of fog consume the beach and within minutes she was lost. Despite being a hardened woman, in her confusion she began to shout and scream for help. Little known to her, a nearby fishing crew aboard their boat had thankfully heard her pleas. But try as they might, they couldn’t find her due to the enveloping vapour and soon the tide drew in and the woman perished in the mud. The next day her body was found on the flats. Her screams can still be heard on mist-enshrouded nights, but no one now dares venture forth onto the mud in case they, too, succumb to the tide.
At Caister-on-Sea there was once a legend that a young girl died from grief after her lover drowned at sea. His ship had run aground on Scroby Sand. The young woman on her deathbed made a rather peculiar request, and asked that her body be encased within a pyramid in the tower atop the church. Nowadays, the ‘tomb’ is a landmark in honour of brave lifeboat men; rarely is the structure known as the ‘Maiden’s Tomb’, probably because the story is a myth, but a good one at that.
The Isle of Lewis, as well as being known for its phantom lights, is famous for a spectral woman who was seen by two airmen – Donald Paton and Charles Palmer – on the beach as they had crossed the moors from the River Barvas to Loch Barvas. The men had been staying with a widow woman but decided to visit their airmen colleagues, who were situated at the Butt of Lewis. After walking some way the airmen settled down for a bite to eat. When they continued on their way they saw a woman approach along the coastline. She was dressed in all black. The two men turned away quickly to light their cigarettes – made all the more difficult because of the strong winds – and when they turned back there was no sign of the woman.
When the men returned to the widow’s house they spoke of the figure and were told that they had probably seen Morag, who in 1895 had lost her husband – who was a shepherd – in an awful storm. Morag went out to search for him, but never returned. Her husband was in fact safe: he’d found shelter in a cave then he managed to get back home to his children, but his wife never came back.
The Isle Of Wight coast is rumoured to be haunted by the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. In life he resided at Farringford Hall and would often take to the downs for walks. After his death in 1892, Tennyson was still seen walking along the coast, adorned in a dark coat and black, wide-brimmed hat – an arresting sight for anyone on a moonless night.
I would like to end this section with a couple of very mysterious and terrifying tales from Beachy Head at Eastbourne in East Sussex. The chalk cliff is said to be the highest in Britain, at over 500ft, and it is also one of the most common places for people to commit suicide.
As well as being terrified of the sea, I have a fear of heights, and in 1981 at the grand old age of 7 I visited the place with my mum, dad, nan and granddad. I was brave enough to stand about 30ft from the edge whereas my mother, who is absolutely petrified of heights, couldn’t even look out across the sea. Admittedly, whether you are afraid of heights or not, there is a certain pull about these sorts of places.
It is no surprise that ghosts are seen around cliffs. Numerous suicides that have taken place at various locations known as Lover’s Leap have spawned many a ghost story. (Neil Arnold)
Strangely, the name Beachy Head has nothing to do with the word ‘beach’; in fact, the name is a corruption of the French words meaning ‘beautiful headland’. In 1274, the chalk headland is noted as Beauchef, but it wasn’t until the 1700s that the cliff became regularly known as Beachy Head.
In 1831 a lighthouse was constructed off Beachy Head and was in use by 1834, but in 1999, due to cliff erosion, it was moved 50ft inland. The area around the base of the cliffs does become swamped by mist and so, for safety purposes, another lighthouse was built in 1902.
On average, more than twenty people are said to leap to their deaths from Beachy Head each year. Today there are day and night patrols of the area in the hope of preventing suicides. I’ve always known Beachy Head for two things: a legend told to me as child that courting couples would jump, hand in hand to their death from a spot known as Lover’s Leap; and secondly that one of my favourite films of all time, Quadrophenia, had several scenes filmed on the cliff tops. Interestingly, Lover’s Leap – a legendary term – is mentioned all over the world in reference to spots where couples have been known to jump to their deaths.
Fairlight Glen in Hastings has its own Lover’s Leap. The story in this county is that in 1786 a young sailor named Charles Lamb was in love with a lady named Elizabeth, but her father never approved of the relationship. This went to the extent that, to prevent Elizabeth from seeing Charles, her father put her in a house near the glen under the supervision of a trusted servant. Even so, from the window she was able to signal to the ship that young Charles had boarded and they were able to arrange secret meetings. In some versions of the legend, Charles would allegedly climb the steep face of the cliff to meet his sweetheart.
Those who know the legend cite two different endings: one being that the couple ran away together and lived happily ever after; but the other version states that poor Elizabeth, restricted by her father, jumped to her death from the cliff screaming the rhyme: ‘The shells of the ocean shall be my bed, and the shrimps go wagging over my head.’ Those who wish for a happy ending to this turn of events claim that, as the young woman jumped her dress snagged on the overhanging branches and she was eventually saved by Charles, but another version tells how both jumped from the cliff, hence the name of the spot: Lover’s Leap.
Hastings Castle, now very much a ruin, was built in the eleventh century. There is an eerie legend attached to the area, for it is said that on certain misty mornings, fishermen have seen the original castle, in all its glory, rising from the mist. A ghostly figure has also been seen walking along the cliff edge. But I digress: now back to the horrors of the heights.
I recall many years ago when pulling into the car park of Beachy Head that there was a sign advertising the Samaritans. The sign was erected to try to prevent people from jumping off the cliff. It is said that some of Beachy Head’s suicide victims liked to visit the nearby pub for one last drink before jumping to their death. Over the years many people have reported that whilst walking near to the edge of the cliff top they’ve sensed something very evil lurking nearby. This feeling may simply be the awesome draw of the cliff; in fact, just thinking about Beachy Head makes my knees go weak. Witnesses who have felt the presence describe something unnatural: ‘as though there is an invisible path reaching out to the horizon,’ commented one passer-by.
A Dr S.J. Surtees studied the increasing fatality rate connected with Beachy Head, stating: ‘Personally I feel that it is the publicity of the place that attracts the next victim. It is a question of fashion – one person jumps then others follow suit.’ In one peculiar case in point, a photographer was sitting overlooking the cliff when he was approached by a man who asked him if he wanted a good photo, and with that leapt to his death.
Over the years, there have been several sightings of apparitions perched on the cliff edge. One such figure is said to wear black robes and gaze out to sea. Another legend claims that the figure appears at the foot of the cliff and beckons people, whereas other witnesses have described that, whilst walking on the grassy verge, they heard whispering voices and in some cases their name being called. The fact that the area is ancient – it has been used since before Neolithic times – suggests that all manner of spirits could lurk there and some of these may have no relation to the high rate of suicides. One theory put forward is that some spots on the cliff were once used for human sacrifice: where victims were bound at the hands and feet, set alight and then rolled over the cliff. It is said that Roman leader Safo jumped to his death from Beachy Head as he believed it would make him immortal.
Beachy Head is just one of those unusual places, made all the more sinister and negative by the regular suicides. In the past, certain spots of the headland have been exorcised but to no avail: people still report the black-robed figure and also a clutch of wraiths in ‘strange dress’ that simply walk off over the precipice. In 1952 one exorcist claimed that whilst attempting to bless the place some force tried to edge him off the cliff. The medium, a chap named Ray de Vekey, alleged that he saw the figure of a bearded man wearing a monk’s habit. De Vekey was of the opinion that the spirits present wanted some sort of revenge.
The author aged 7, with his grandparents Win and Ron at Beachy Head in 1981. (Paulene Arnold)
Despite the exorcism, a few years afterwards two climbers claimed they were accosted by some type of ‘malign presence’, which hovered close to them until they moved away from the edge. Several decades ago, a young girl rushed up to a policeman who was on patrol and stated, matter-of-factly, that she’d seen a dark shadow that suddenly enveloped her. Although the sun had been shining brightly, when she became engulfed the woman felt and saw only darkness. The woman managed to break free from the manifestation but then alleged something ‘huge and menacing’ began to follow her along the cliff top. ‘It was as if it was driving me towards the edge,’ she reported.
Another of the ghosts about the place is said to be that of a young woman, who walks to the edge, looks around and then jumps. One evening a man named Anthony Lawton was returning from visiting friends at Newhaven when, in the vicinity of Beachy Head, he saw a whitish figure walking extremely close to the edge of the cliff. Anthony called out to the girl as he was worried for her safety but he got no reply; he concluded it must have been a ghost! On another occasion a Mr Ashcroft, from New Zealand, was walking along the road that flanks the headland one night with his son when they spotted a misty figure perched on the edge of the cliff. As they approached, the figure vanished. Another local spirit is that of a farmer’s wife who, with a baby in her arms, jumps to her death.
In his book The Strange and Uncanny, John Macklin mentions an old manor house situated nearby and points the finger at this building with regards to the strange feelings and dark robed figures seen. He writes that, ‘… it is from this house that the trouble is said to stem.’ It is said that as monasteries were dissolved monks took refuge in other places; one such building was the manor house, the owner of which betrayed the hiding monks. Legend has it that, in response, the monks placed a curse on the man and his property. Is the same curse still in effect, drawing people to the edge and forcing them to the rocks and waves below?
In 1975 a Lionel Geoffrey Jaekel visited the Orkneys for the first time in his life. One Sunday he left Stromness where he was staying and went for an afternoon stroll along the cliffs. There was not a soul in sight as he took in the awe-inspiring sights, including the 360ft-high Black Craig. After walking for about thirty minutes or so, Lionel sensed a powerful force present that gave him a ‘feeling of compulsion to go to the cliff edge and look over’.
Despite taking to the cliffs that day, Lionel had always had a fear of heights, and yet something was drawing him ever closer: ‘I had literally to fight to keep about ten yards from the edge.’ This awful feeling stayed with him for half a mile or so, and then gradually dissipated.
When Lionel returned home he was keen to conduct a bit of research into the area and found out that the spot was reputedly haunted. In 1860, two farm labourers had fallen out over their love for the same local woman and one had murdered the other with an agricultural tool. Then, under the cover of darkness, he had tied his erstwhile rival to a white horse, which he led to the cliff edge. There, he somehow forced both horse and rider over the rim. Ever since then there have been occasional sightings on the cliff edge of a white horse, and the strange feelings are no doubt the awful echoes of that terrible tragedy.
As a quick note, it is worth mentioning, although not sea related, the Cairngorm mountains, which are said to be haunted by an apparition known as the ‘big grey man’. This allegedly sinister figure can stand up to several hundred feet tall and instils a feeling of utter dread upon ramblers, hikers and the like. Those who have experienced the spectre note how they feel an oppressive air and also report hearing voices or ghostly music. In a sense, this type of phenomena echoes the trickster spirits embedded in folklore, whether in the form of phantom lights or black dogs, said to lead people astray or to their death.
So, Beachy Head seems to be one of those places best avoided; or is there a possibility that the terrible statistics are false? Folklore researcher Michael Goss contacted Eastbourne police a few years ago to enquire about the suicides and asked whether the stories were true, to which the officer on duty replied, ‘Yes. A look in the newspapers will tell you that.’
As we know, newspapers are not always the most reputable source when it comes to alleged ‘true stories’, and ghost-hunter Elliott O’Donnell, who briefly mentions Beachy Head and its haunting in his Haunted Britain book, doesn’t give much credence to the legend either. He states: ‘A remarkable feature in many of the Beachy Head tragedies, and one that has never been satisfactorily explained, is that when the bodies of suicides have been found, the left shoe has been missing.’
I’m not sure how Elliott knew this and, let’s be realistic: if just a couple of people leapt from the cliff to their death, there is probably a good chance that a shoe may come off on the way down or during impact on those sharp rocks. There is also the possibility that the phantom monk, the ghostly woman and the like were all made up; simply being urban legends created to tie in with the alleged regular suicides of the cliff. Even so, on a rain-battered and windy night I can think of far better places I would rather be.
MISCELLANEOUS MARITIME MYSTERIES
Before I move on to the final chapter and bewilder you even further, I’d like to share a small selection of extraordinary tales that I haven’t been able to squeeze into the previous chapters.
Firstly, there is the tale of the mysterious green ooze – reported as being the size of Devon – which enveloped the coastal waters of Cornwall in 1999 causing much intrigue. Several British tabloids covered the phenomenon, which appeared as a lush turquoise blanket on the surface of the water. The bizarre carpet consisted of billions of minuscule aquatic plants, which exploded due to the hot weather in the July of said year. Stranger still, when viewed from the space the phytoplankton appeared as a milky white colour.
In his book Lo!, Charles Fort speaks of the coast of Norfolk in 1869 being covered by a substance ‘of a thick, pea-soup appearance’: a peculiar band of drowned ladybirds, ‘about ten feet wide, and two or three miles long’. There is also mention that, on 26 July some 60 miles off Lincolnshire’s coast, ‘columns of aphides’ descended from the heavens and gave the air a foul stench.
When I was very young, my family and I would often go on day trips to coastal resorts, zoo parks and other attractions. My mum often tells me the story of how, one summer’s day, we visited the town of Ramsgate on the Kent coast and there was a ladybird plague. ‘The bugs were literally everywhere,’ she said, ‘absolutely billions of them that had swarmed in from the coast like some ominous cloud.’ I don’t recall this incident but looking through files have found several reports pertaining to marine swarms that certainly back this type of occurrence up. An ominous cloud seen over the Channel, moving from Calais to Ramsgate, was reported in the late 1800s. Billions of ladybirds appeared on the coast, and seats, buildings, boats and people were covered in them. According to Fort, ‘Ladybird shovellers were hired to throw the drifts into sewers.’
All manner of objects and animals have turned up on the shores of the British Isles.
Fort then records that a few days after, Kent was once again bombarded by a ladybird swarm and the next day ‘an enormous multitude’ of new arrivals appeared at Dover. Worse still, the Field of 28 August 1869 records how a man, visiting Ramsgate by steamboat, experienced a hideous swarm of a ‘bee-like fly’, with billions more being reported ‘at Walton, about 30 miles north of Margate’.
According to the Daily Express of 19 February 1974, thousands upon thousands of ‘sea mice’ had been found washed ashore on the coast of Southsea, Hants. The 5in-long grey sea worms are rarely seen. In July the same year, millions of spiny crabs were reported invading the coast of Bognor Regis, destroying fishermen’s nets and pots. On 5 January 2011 the Daily Mail reported ‘40,000 devil crabs washed up on British beach after freezing conditions gave them hypothermia’. The incredible story was confirmed with a photograph showing Palm Bay at Margate. Meanwhile, www.kent-online.co.uk on 13 January 2009 featured the story of thousands of crabs washed up at Thanet, and then the following year a ‘Tide of dead crabs’ on Westbrook Bay, also in Thanet.
I must admit, though, the funniest maritime swarm I’ve seen of late has to concern the thousands of plastic toy ducks which turned up on varying coastlines around the world after falling off the back of a cargo ship (not a lorry this time!) some fifteen years previous. The ducks – all 20,000-odd of them – had travelled around 17,000 miles, some turning up on West Country shores. They were spilled from the hold of a ship in the Pacific on 10 January 1992 and have gradually turned up in places as far and wide as New England, Hawaii and the Hebrides, north-west of Scotland.
It is amazing just how many strange things turn up at sea, and whilst on the subject of out-of-place bird life, I can’t leave this segment without mentioning a story from July 2009 concerning an ocean-going budgie who was found off Brixham in Devon on the 5th of said month. The bird was discovered by a team of scuba divers, given the name Captain and then taken to the local RSPCA shelter. Apparently a budgie breeder had lost five birds from his garden, but who would have thought that one of them would end up at sea! And what about the even stranger tale from 1830 of the ‘large eagle’ that was found washed ashore at Deal? The bird of prey was ‘presented to the Canterbury Philosophical Institution’, according to the Rochester Gazette & Weekly Advertiser of 16 February.
If you thought these avian mysteries were bamboozling, then I’ll leave you with two, even more incredible stories – the first from March 1960, off Flamborough Head, Humberside. Fishermen aboard a trawler got the shock of their lives when in their nets they found … wait for it … an elephant! Scoff all you like sceptics, because, secondly, twenty-two years later fishermen off the Aberdeen coast also found an elephant, albeit dead, that was floating some 32 miles out in the North Sea! The mind boggles!
Culbin Sands dominate a huge stretch of coastline in Moray, Scotland. The beach is owned by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) as it is a haven for wildlife. In the July of 1955, Bill Macintosh had visited the sands with his wife and family. It had been a glorious day and Bill had lain on the sand and dozed off, high up on the beach. His slumber was disturbed by a North Sea chill. A drizzly mist was now sweeping across the beach, and as Bill got to his feet and looked around for his family, he realised the beach was deserted. There was no sign of his wife and three children, who he was sure had probably found something of interest nearby to pass the time while he slept. Bill shouted out, hoping for some sort of response, but all was still; eerie, almost. ‘No need to panic,’ he thought to himself, and he called out again before walking across the beach, just in time to see a beach ball bobbing on the waves. At that point, his heart started to beat faster and a cold sweat broke out on his brow. But there were footprints, he now saw, not going into the sea but instead heading up towards the dunes. He followed them until they seemed to stop dead. Despite searching for a couple of hours until dark, Bill never found his family and was completely unaware that they had been taken by the killer sands of Culbin: a cruel beach that for centuries has claimed many victims. Some say an ancient gypsy curse was to blame.
Perhaps this was the same curse that caused the sands to wipe out a village and bury it hundreds of feet below. Rumour has it that in the 1960s two forestry workers discovered a cottage, all but consumed by sand. They found an opening into the building and it looked as if the owners had only just left it. When the foresters returned with another team the cottage had been engulfed again, only the bumps on the beach now signifying where these remnants had been. Author John Macklin, in writing of the sands, added, ‘Nobody knows what brought the killer sands to Culbin, or why they started’. Somehow, this freakish area has the ability, like deadly waves, to wipe out communities and swallow them whole, just as it did to Bill Macintosh’s family.
Beware the killer sands! (Joyce Goodchild)
A few years ago, I was investigating a haunted house and spoke to an antique dealer who was firmly of the opinion that inanimate objects could harbour so-called paranormal energy. The dealer told me that on several occasions he had destroyed items of furniture and even jewellery because it had a bad vibe about it! This brings to mind a couple of sea-related tales.
In 1935 a Mr Rhomer built a house out of the timbers used to construct a ship by the name of Mauretania. When the house was built strange things began to occur: odd creaking and moaning noises came from the woodwork, as if the house had become a big old ship on rough seas. Ghost-hunter Peter Underwood investigated the house, known as Little Gatton, situated in Reigate in the county of Surrey. Those who visited the dwelling got a very sombre feeling from it and tragedy seemed to revolve around it, with there being several deaths outside. This included the death of a young woman who had been run over outside, and a fire killing a girl in the neighbouring house. Maybe all this ill luck was simple coincidence, but the house was nevertheless eventually sold and the next owner regretted every minute of being there.
I’ve often wondered just how many houses, or at least their bowed ceilings, have been constructed using ships’ timbers. Could a ship that has experienced a lot of tragedy, such as a shipwreck, transfer its negative energies elsewhere?
In his book Healing the Haunted, Dr Kenneth McAll writes of a ‘happy, united family’ who resided in an ‘old, thatched cottage’, at an undisclosed location. Despite being very level-headed people, the family always sensed a presence around the house and eventually asked Dr McAll if he could pay a visit. When he arrived, he was extremely impressed by the huge oak beams across the ceiling that ‘were obviously old ships’ timbers’. The family gathered round and told their accounts of seeing an old man in the house, often in the vicinity of the stairs. Although the man was not malign in his presence, the family felt uncomfortable at him being there and so Dr McAll requested they hold a service to ‘release’ the spirit, which seemed to work.
The Mermaid Inn, a delightful twelfth-century, Grade II listed building located in Rye, East Sussex, not only has strong smuggling connections (the notorious Hawkhurst gang had their headquarters there in the 1730s and ’40s) but some of the chairs have been carved from old ships’ timbers. This and the smuggling link could explain why the inn is so haunted and why it was even exorcised in the early 1990s. The village in general is considered one of Britain’s most haunted locations and there are a few sea-related phantoms. A house at South Undercliff may well be haunted by an old sea captain who was rumoured to have shot himself in the building. In the village church there is said to be the spectre of a headless sailor. A ghostly sailor is also said to haunt the Hope Anchor Hotel, although those who have experienced the ghost only hear its footsteps.
The ghost-infested Mermaid Inn at Rye in East Sussex. (Terry Cameron)
Another old inn with similar paranormal activity, which has been greatly investigated, is Jamaica Inn, situated on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. This building used to be a notorious haunt of smugglers who would go to the coast and with false lures entice ships aground. Numerous ghosts are said to haunt the property.
An even more peculiar case pertaining to a removed part of a ship being haunted comes from St Levan’s churchyard in Cornwall. Many years ago a Captain Wetherel perished at sea in the vicinity of Rundle Stone (Runnelstone), described as a ‘hazardous rock pinnacle situated about a mile south of Gwennap Head’. Captain Wetherel was interred at St Levan’s churchyard and his grave strikes fear into the heart of anyone who should walk by it. Legend has it that beneath the soil the toll of a bell can be clearly heard at the time that marks the anniversary of his death at sea. The bell is said to be the exact same bell used on his ship. One afternoon a group of young people visiting the churchyard reported that, as they walked by Wetherel’s tomb, they decided to stop and read the inscription upon it when suddenly a loud ringing came from close to beneath their feet.
A local sailor returning home from sea one day began hearing stories about the phantom bell and assumed it was complete nonsense and simply folklore, but decided that at midnight he would visit the grave to be sure. Two comrades of the sailor decided to go with him but remained in the church porch and waited. As the clock struck twelve, the sailor rushed back to his colleagues and through heavy gasps exclaimed, ‘True as I’m alive, I heard eight bells struck in the graveyard and wouldn’t go near the spot again for the world.’ It is said that shortly afterwards, upon returning to sea, the young sailor drowned. No wonder local people rarely talk about the toll of the phantom bell: for fear, not of ridicule, but of death.
Stanbury Manor, situated in Morwenstow, Cornwall, has a haunted relic. An old chest, which was believed to have been on board one of the ships of the Spanish Armada, was purchased by a Stanbury Manor owner named Mr Ley. He told researcher Peter Underwood that the dealer he purchased it from was ‘glad to see the back of it’ because there had been an air of the weird about it – probably due to the fact that it had been decorated with depictions of headless bodies. According to Mr Ley, when the chest was owned by the dealer it would cause items within its vicinity to fall off walls of their own accord.
When Mr Ley brought the cedar chest home he placed it in the armoury of the building until he could find somewhere more suitable but, according to Underwood, ‘there the first unexplained incident took place’.
The following morning Mr Ley walked into the room and suddenly six guns that had been hanging on the wall near to the chest just fell to the floor. Mr Ley thought nothing of this although it was extremely unusual, and decided that day to move the object into his and his wife’s bedroom. Later that evening, the couple were hanging some curtains when a picture fell from the wall and struck Mr Ley on the head, even though he was not close to the frame. The weirdest thing, however, was the fact that although the picture was heavy Mr Ley didn’t feel a thing when it hit him.
The next day, Mr and Mrs Ley were in the same room when a trio of pictures suddenly fell from the wall and then, two days later, more pictures dropped to the ground. Then, a couple of days after this, one of Mr Ley’s relatives died – but he was hesitant to connect the two. A while afterwards, according to Underwood, ‘A former curate of Newlyn West recognised the photo of the Morwenstow “poltergeist chest” and related the following story …’: a long time before it had been in the possession of two elderly women who, due to being deaf, could only communicate to each other by writing. Over the years, and due to their reclusive nature, they had accumulated a lot of items – some junk, some valuable – and eventually decided to put them up for sale. When the local curate decided to visit them he found it very hard to communicate, as they expected him to write notes as they did. According to the curate, when the women were youthful they had stayed with some friends and, as they had arrived late, decided to go straight to bed rather than unpack their belongings. The next morning their attention was drawn to the old chest on which they had placed their clothes, not least because it had begun to open of its own accord. The women sat agog as the chest revealed something so apparently vile that it shook them to the core, rendering them deaf on the spot. After this incident, the women never revealed exactly what they saw that night.
Peter Underwood, in hearing the tale, was reminded of a similar chest once encountered by a level-headed and sceptical surgeon in the Midlands. He had gone to stay with a friend one night and was drawn to the object. Upon opening the large chest, he was horrified to find inside the body of a man whose throat had been slit from ear to ear. The surgeon slammed the lid shut but once he had gathered himself, creaked it back open – only to find the chest empty. The following day he mentioned the incident to his friend who told him the grisly tale of a man who had committed suicide, his body being found in the trunk.
Had this been the same ghastly chest that had struck the two old women deaf? Had they seen the suicide victim when they gazed into the blackness? I guess we will never know until someone takes a peek into the sea chest of doom again.
Another reputedly cursed item is that of a model galleon, housed in what is said to be Britain’s oldest pub: Nottingham’s Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem. The model vessel was said to have been left by a sailor more than 150 years previous and remained hung from the roof of the pub. The cobweb-ridden artefact is said to be cursed and should anyone attempt to clean or move the boat, then tragedy will befall them. Over the years, three people who ignored the curse are said to have died. In October 1996 the pub closed for a few months of refurbishment and pub manager Marilyn Dare was hesitant to disturb the ship. She told the Nottingham Evening Post, ‘I have a bad feeling about the galleon being moved. Strange things have been happening over the last few weeks; lights have been switching on and off by themselves and things have been moving of their own accord.’ Medium Mallory Stendall was even called in by the brewery bosses to bless the ship, so as not to expose any of the builders to the alleged curse.
According to Fortean Times magazine, Issue 256 (December 2009): ‘Mike Gilpin was working as a docker on a pier in Boston in 2000 around the time a salvage vessel was landing pieces of hull from the wreck of the RMS Titanic.’ Mike, eager for a souvenir, grabbed a chunk of the wreckage and took it home and kept it in a jar, but within weeks strange and negative things began to happen. ‘I’ve been divorced, lost my house, I crashed my truck and my motorcycle,’ so the Irish Examiner reported on 16 April 2009. ‘Then I took the piece to my new summer home in New Hampshire and it burned down …’ The only way for Mike to avoid further ill luck was to visit Cork Harbour on the 97th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, and toss his souvenir back into the depths.
In the September of 2008 an American tourist – as reported in the Scottish Sunday Post – visited the isle of Iona and, whilst taking a trip to the thirteenth-century abbey, decided to keep a piece of stone that had broken off from the wall. The tourist then hopped on the boat in order to leave the island but the tour guide asked if any visitors had taken any souvenirs, for, if so, they could expect bad luck. Of course, the American didn’t believe in such fate until, moments later, her £250 digital camera dropped into the water. The tourist was initially able to laugh this off, until the next day when, on the plane leaving Dublin, another strange incident took place. The cabin pressure had been malfunctioning and so the plane delayed take-off. Then, when the ‘victim’ finally made it home, she suffered severe financial problems and also had a nasty fall, resulting in an operation. In the December of 2008 the American decided enough was enough, and posted the piece of stone back to the isle of Iona, requesting it be put back where it had come from.
On 18 July 1967, a lobster fisherman named Bertram Stride was checking his pots 2 miles off Highcliffe in Hampshire when his eyes met a spectacular sight. ‘I looked up,’ he reported, ‘and there it was, a vast curtain of water about half a mile away as high as Salisbury Cathedral.’
Had this been some type of extremely rare natural phenomenon, such as a waterspout? It may be a coincidence and completely unrelated, but around the same time strange lights were seen off the coast by witnesses, including an airline pilot, who saw ‘clusters of objects streaming trails of light’ that headed towards France.
Even more interesting was the report from August 1974 of a giant waterspout, which was observed near the Isle of Wight and witnessed by the master of the Hull-based ship, City of Athens. Skipper Charles Hanson contacted the coastguard after seeing a giant spout, which he believed could easily have damaged any small boats in the area. It was first seen some 6 miles off the coast of St Catherine’s Point and headed towards the mainland. ‘It was a solid column of water about 20-ft high,’ Hanson commented. ‘And there was a disturbance in the water around it like a hovercraft would make.’ The Meteorological Office confirmed that later that day there had been a similar giant spout seen off Peacehaven in Sussex but a coastguard at Bembridge, Isle of Wight said, ‘I’ve seen only one before. They’re like smaller versions of a tornado.’
These types of rare waterspouts have been held responsible for some unusual falls from the sky, in their time. Fish, frogs, snails, hay, metal, blood and excrement have all been known to fall from the sky for no apparent reason, though it seems highly unlikely that a spout could be so selective as to only chose certain species of fish, or sweep up frogs and no other creatures.
A peculiar sea-related fall such as this was reported in the Metro of 9 August 2012 under the heading, ‘Kelp me if you can … now it’s raining seaweed here,’ after a Mr and Mrs Overton of Berkeley, near Cheltenham, reported a weird find in their back garden. In fact, a whole street had been covered in seaweed, which a Met Office spokesman named Ian Fergusson claimed had been picked up by a tornado some 20 miles away at Clevedon beach, north Somerset. Why the tornado chose just seaweed seems rather odd, but Fergusson remarked: ‘There were several thunderstorms in the area and if one of the funnel clouds touched down on to the beach, making it a tornado, it could have quite possibly picked up the seaweed.’
The main issue with such a theory is that if such a funnel-type anomaly had swept across a beach, then why hadn’t it picked up shells, sand and other matter – only seaweed?
The Irish Times of 11 August 1998 reported on a bizarre ‘steel-eating micro-organism’ said to be causing severe problems in the port of Killybegs, County Donegal. According to Fortean Times who catalogued the snippet, ‘The unidentified bug, believed to be a combination of two bacteria, destroys modern steel 20 times faster than ordinary rust.’ Bad news then for piers, although a spokesperson for the Department of the Marine in Dublin played down the worry, stating that ‘the symptoms were consistent with accelerated low water corrosion, caused by oxygen-producing bacteria’ even though the rumoured bug had eaten away several Scottish piers in Shetland and Ullapool.
The Devil. Satan. Lucifer. Old Nick. Whatever name you know him by, his part in folklore is potent. In Dorset there are two huge chalk stacks, which sit out in Studland Bay on the tip of Handfast Point, and have been eroded over time by the waves. These two white protrusions are known by several folkloric names: Old Harry, Old Harry’s Wife and Old Nick’s Ground. The rocks were once considered as eerie beacons amidst the crashing waves, and were used to warn ships to steer clear. The devilish associations may have originated as far back as the seventh century, from whence comes a legend that claims the Devil once slept on top of the rocks.
There is also a legend that claims Sir Francis Drake once sold his soul to Satan in order to become an accomplished sea admiral. In his defeat of the Spanish Armada, Drake was said to have been aided by a group of sea witches who conjured up great storms to destroy enemy boats.
Another devilish sea legend comes from the aptly named Devil’s Dyke in Sussex. This beauty spot was allegedly formed when the Devil attempted to dig it out in order to allow the sea to flow in to drown god-fearing parishioners. The problem was, the Devil made so much noise that it awoke an old woman who chased him away with a candle.
Interestingly, the Isle of Wight is actually said to be a lump of soil that fell from the Devil’s furred hoof.
There is a slightly unusual story of a prophetic dream in Lord Halifax’s Ghost Book, which mentions one Countess Chichester, who during the war was visited by a Scottish nurse. The elderly lady told the countess that one night she had had a very strange dream concerning the Forth Bridge, and that in this dream she had seen black whales with castle-like objects upon their backs. These odd forms were circling the third pillar of the bridge. She ignored the dream until the following night, when it came to her again. So vivid was the dream that she wrote to her nephew about it, as he had been employed to work on the bridge. Bizarrely, he replied saying that the ‘whales’ were in fact submarines that had been attempting to attack the bridge, and the strange castle-like protrusions were their periscopes. The nephew stated that at the time his aunt’s letter arrived much work had been done to protect against submarine attack and every pillar, except the third one, as work was still being carried out on it, had been guarded.
Old Harry’s Rocks. (Mark North)
The Devil was once said to have slept on the rocks off Handfast Point in Dorset. (Illustration by Simon Wyatt)
The nephew rushed to his foreman and showed him the letter, which he took very seriously, responding, ‘We had better take measures to make everything safe’. Lo and behold, an enemy submarine did try to destroy the third pillar shortly afterwards, but to no avail thanks to the strange dream!
The John O’Groat Journal of 8 September 1855 ran a bizarre story of the ‘Kitten Swallowed By A Cod’, stating:
A correspondent in Kirkwell alludes to a recent notice in our Stromness news of a rabbit’s leg being found in a ling’s stomach, and adds of his own knowledge something more wonderful, being nothing less than the discovery of an entire kitten in the stomach of a cod caught not long ago in Kirkwell Bay. These facts show that fish in general are not particularly fastidious in the selection of their food.
The burning cliff at Dorset. (Mark North)
I’m now expecting several fishermen to report catching fish with plastic ducks in their bellies!
I’d like to end this chapter with a strange and peculiar yarn attached to the county of Dorset. Local legend has it that during the April of 1827, the east cliff at Ringstead Bay caught fire for no apparent reason. Researchers Mark North and Robert J. Newland, in their fascinating book Dark Dorset, wrote, ‘The cause was once thought to be the effects of a lightning strike igniting the oil shale, but geologists later discovered heat generated by the decomposition of iron pyrites ignited the bituminous shale, and black stone.’ The cliff was said to have been aflame for many days but eventually died out. Ever since that strange episode a National Trust sign has been erected to indicate the legend of the burning cliff.